Monday, July 30, 2012

Reading is funda-metal

They might not be metal per se, though Pesanta is kinda a metal label. Metal's edges are blurrier than ever. Which makes the old saw "I listen to anything but metal" (PDF) a little harder to pull off. That paper is about social constructions of identity through musical taste — basically, by not listening to metal you're saying that you're not like one of those poxy fules of lower-class economics and combat boots.

That's supported by the class implications for omnivorous music listening. I've long held that petit bourgeois have either the money without the taste or the taste without the money; I fall into the latter, I hope.